On our journey through the streets we were looking for a chemist for Ian and finally found one open. The majority of shops are camera stores, suit tailors, jewellery stores, foot massages. Surprisingly we didn’t find one nail pedicure store which, is all the rage back home.
We met up again with Penny & Grant and booked out of the hotel. Our shuttle bus picked us up at the door and dropped us off at Kowloon station where we “checked in” and the train delivered us safe and sound at the airport.
I finally fulfilled one of my life ambitions – to go on a long haul flight in “business class”. I was so excited. It was an odd sensation. The seats were lined up at an angle as separate compartments, comfortable, but not sociable. I did sleep well and the food was much more in keeping with the “upper class” bearing in mind it was still “airline food”.
We reached Dubai just after 9.00pm and as we began lining up for the usual customs check, Linda realised she didn’t have her passport. It appeared that she had somehow left it on board. We thought the worst, like Tom Hanks in the Terminal where Linda would have to wait out her time eating kebab scraps and left over biscuits while her new passport would arrive. After much to-ing and fro-ing Linda finally had her passport found in Ian’s seat compartment. We finally made it to our hotel bed around 1.00am for a 5.00am reboarding on our flight to Amman. Needless to say we didn’t see much of Dubai. We didn’t see much of Amman also, just the transit lounge where we had the customary ice cream with Grant of course.
Time to board our flight to Cairo and it was Grant & Penny’s turn to travel business class, albeit for a short less than 1 & 1/2 hour flight. The whole of the middle east is of course a desert, however you still need to see it and feel it first hand to appreciate it.
We reached the great metropolis called Cairo and it was like stepping back to the 60’s. I don’t think any maintenance has been done since that time. Yes various new buildings / hotels have been built, but they are surrounded by 3rd world dilapidated buildings where somehow people still live their day to day lives. We were met by our “driver” Khalid who had arranged for a minibus and delivered us to our wonderfully spacious hotel, the Semiramis Intercontinental, which is a luxurious hotel overlooking the grand Nile River.
After settling into our rooms we decided to brave the busy streets of Cairo in search of a local restaurant / eating establishment. We checked with our hotel doorman who assured us that some fine traditional eateries were to be found “down the road” about 10 mins walk. Well, what a walk it was. Cars zipping past honking horns, taxis trying to engage us and general mayhem. We thought Italy was bad, but it doesn’t compare with Cairo with its multi lanes of vehicles in one way traffic, that is 4-5 lanes of cars in a 3 lane road. Our walk was down the bank of the river Nile and it seemed that every 50m there would be stationed a “tourist” police or armed soldier, who would greet us with a “hello”. We were to find out that that is the only English word most Egyptians know. Well, after walking about 2klm we didn’t find any eatery so we decided to turn back and walk to our hotel where we knew that there was food. Linda and Ian decided a taxi would suit them better so it was the “young ones” who ventured back on foot.
We finally made it and were reunited with Ian and Linda. The walk had increased my appetite - Anne would say I don’t need anything to increase my appetite. We had decided to eat at the hotels’ buffet restaurant and what a great decision that was. I’m not much of a broccoli eater but it was sensational, as was most of the food. Well as usual I couldn’t help myself and by the time we had finished eating I couldn’t breathe. It was at this point that Grant had decided that he was tired after only 4 hours sleep since leaving Sydney. He had forgotten that we had 2 nights in hotel rooms, but why spoil his memory.
There was one last thing that we needed to do. That was to go “shopping” for our own stock of drink for our room. Ian and I bid farewell to Anne and Linda and we thought we would be brave it again and hit the streets of Cairo.
This time we headed up the opposite direction. I remembered our driver said that “rush hour” was all day long and he was right. There seems to be no let up to the traffic. We walked around the corner to what became Sadat Square, a busy intersection with a massive roundabout, where cars, buses, horse drawn carts and people jostled for positions on the road. Ian and I had found a subway where it looked like we could travel underground to arrive safe and sound on the other side of all this mayhem. Well after ferreting our way through the underground we only made it half way round to where we wanted to be, so we decided to be as the locals, you know “when in Cairo …” well here we were, Ian and I walking through the lanes of cars while they were still moving. It looks worse than it is. The trick is to start walking and don’t stop. It seems that the cars swerve and the pedestrians just cross like they were taking a “walk in the park”. It was an adrenaline rush – all the beep, beep and swerve, swerve. We made it to the other side just like the chicken, but not like the frog. It was so busy with people milling around everywhere. If you can picture a large shopping mall with shoppers and people meeting, well this was pretty much the same, but no shopping mall, just the occasional smoking bar, kebab shop, internet café etc.
After buying our drinks it was back to the subway and this time we made it to the other side of the road, but a bit to the left. We eventually made it back to our hotel relieved to have survived the near death experience called “shopping in Cairo”. The end of day 3 and now looking forward to discovering Egypt with our own special tour guide named Khaled.
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